Текст книги "Cam Girl"

Автор книги: Leah Raeder

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Then the texts turned angry. It wasn’t fair, she said. We’d both made mistakes.

Then sweet again. Poignant. They came days apart. Weeks.

I’m sorry.

I wish you were here.

I just miss you.

When the texts got sparser I came to her house, drunk, to reboot the cycle. To keep her hooked.

“Is this funny?” Elle said. “Is hurting me a joke to you?”

“Everything is a joke. Especially pain.” I curled my bad hand in the grass. It felt like grabbing a fistful of hypodermic needles. “Pain is fucking hilarious.”

“I think you should leave.”

“I don’t know where else to go.”

“Go anywhere else. Please.”

I was so used to being hurt I barely felt it. A finger on a deep bruise, pressing a little harder.

“You don’t want me anymore,” I said, and laughed. “Nobody wants me.”

Elle’s phone emerged from the blanket. “I’ll get you a hotel.”

“Who’s in your house?”

She turned her back and said, “Do you have any vacancies?”

“Who’s in the house with you, Elle?”

“I’d like to rent a room, please.”

Throwing money at the problem to make it go away. Just like her mother.

I scooped up the bottle and rose shakily to my feet.

“Vada,” she said.

“Fuck your money. And fuck you.”

Ellis followed me as I stumbled toward the street. She stopped at the edge of her lawn.

“Happy fucking birthday,” I said, and took a swig off the bottle, and then, on impulse, smashed it on the concrete. It burst spectacularly, glass and clear liquor flowering into the freezing air. A perfect encapsulation of how I’d felt these past months, jagged and see-through and a complete fucking waste.

I bent to pick a shard from the sidewalk and she rushed to my side. “Do not.”

“Do not what?” It felt so good, being childish. Making her care about me. Making her feel actual concern.

Her hand clamped onto my wrist. I dropped the shard.

And shoved her onto the grass, tackling her.

We’d fought before. Gone at each other savagely with nails and edged words. It was all so familiar: my hands fitting around the grooves of her throat, and hers under my shirt, raking my skin.

“Fuck,” I said, my breath a cloud connecting us. “More.”

Nails ripped down my spine. I was too drunk to really feel it but my grip tightened on her neck and she scratched mercilessly and then it was a real fight. We rolled through the grass, clawing, choking. At one point I bolted her wrists to the ground but somehow she ended up on top, holding me down. I writhed and she stayed on me, viciously agile.

“God,” I panted. “Don’t stop. Please.”

I wrapped my arms around her waist. Pulled her body hard against mine.

Ellis wrenched away. I tried to drag her back but she was limp now and my bad hand twinged, fire lacing up my nerves. I slammed my palms into the grass. My hair hung in my eyes, a dark scrawl across this night, this ugliness.

“What do you want?” she rasped.

“You. Touch me. Hold me.”

“No. You just want us to hurt each other.”

I sat back on my heels, exhausted. Sad, stupid, ugly. All of this. My shoulder blades burned, the skin shredded as if someone had torn off wings. Vodka churned in my gut like a jumble of razor blades. You’re right, I thought. I want to be hurt. Because this is the closest I feel to you anymore, when you hurt me.

“Go home,” Ellis said.

“You are my home.”

She kept her face averted but I saw the hiccup before a sob.

“Don’t cry,” I whispered.

“You need to leave.” She refused to look at me. I saw the effort it took, the tense lines of her shoulders. “Please leave, Vada. And don’t come back.”

“What?”

“I can’t do this anymore. I need a clean break.”

“There’s no break. Nothing’s breaking.”

“We need to. We’ve been dragging it out for months. All we do is hurt each other. Please, just let me go.”

I stood up, teetering. “What are you saying?”

Elle didn’t move and didn’t go back to the house. She simply waited, letting me rage and burn out. Like always.

“Look at me, Ellis. Fuck you. Say it to my face.”

Nothing.

I went to my knees beside her, touched her shoulder. “Don’t do this. I’m fucked-up, okay? I’m sorry. I’ll be better.” I gripped harder. “Everything fucking hurts. I feel raw, everywhere. I’m sorry for taking it out on you. It’s depression or something. I’ll get help. But don’t do this, okay? Don’t cut me off. I need you.”

Nothing.

“Elle, please. You’re all I have.”

Tears ran down her face. She remained silent.

I let go.

My teeth gritted till it felt like they’d snap, every bone in me poised on the brink of pulverizing into white powder. There was a pain inside that I could no longer express. I couldn’t draw it anymore. I couldn’t share it with her. It lay buried, trapped, echoing off its own walls and growing louder and louder, a scream I could never voice.

How do people go through their entire life with something like this inside?

But they don’t. That’s why Ryan got behind the wheel with a 0.20 BAC.

A pain like this must become violence. Toward another, or yourself.

She was right. I needed to go, before I hurt her more.

I staggered to my feet and ran through halo after halo of streetlight.

It was a long way back, and after crying and puking myself into dehydration I collapsed on a bench near the shore. I felt like some creature out of an Ernst painting, a patchwork monster, a furious unraveling of color, grotesque and absurd. Staining everything I touched.

I curled into a ball and tried to stop shivering.

It used to be us versus the world. Fast friends from the day we met, always guarding each other’s backs. When I let my anger take control Ellis was there to soothe me, to gently pull at my reins. When someone took advantage of her naivete, her faith in the goodness of people, I shut them down without her even knowing. I’d sheltered her a little, but she deserved a little sheltering. Her heart was pure, open. Not shadowy and labyrinthine like mine.

But sometimes when you absorb all the hate and cruelty meant for someone else, it gets inside you. Feeds on your fears, your insecurities. Speaks in the voices of people you know, like your mother, and says, Two grown women should not share one bedroom, mija, and, Vada, you’ll never find a man if you keep living like this. Sometimes you end up resenting the person you’re protecting.

Somewhere along the way, it became me versus her.

The rest of the walk flickered in my head like a dream. Salt wind stung my face, white grains collecting like barnacles on my shoes. Exposing your open wounds to an ocean is pure masochism. Then the alcohol rose in me like the tide, drowning all the bad parts, and it felt so good to drown a little.

Someone was sitting on my porch steps.

My idiot heart soared and I thought, Ellis, but Max raised his head, and for a second I was so crushed it wasn’t her that I was glad he knew how this felt. The stomach plunge of never seeing the person you’re hoping to see.

“I finally did it,” I said, leaning on the fence. “Bottom of the barrel. I’m officially homeless next week.”

Max sat silently, backlit by the porch lantern.

My body kept growing heavier. I slid down to the frozen dirt. “Probably lost my job today, too. And I’m dropping out of school. And it’s my birthday and Ellis said she never wants to see me again.” My voice cracked on that last part. “Know how suicides give away all their stuff before they kill themselves? The universe did it for me. Now all I’ve got to do is find a razor.”

Max got up. A bolt of morbid excitement shot through me.

Come on, I thought. Hurt me. I deserve it.

Air trembled in his throat, like a death rattle.

He was crying.

My arms rose and we more or less fell into each other. Rigid, resistant, limbs entwining even as our faces angled away. But the contact thawed us and he stroked my hair, and I clung to him and let his sobs rock me, toss me, like waves. Fuel and woodsmoke. Fatherly smells.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered in his ear. “It was a stupid joke. I’m drunk.”

Still he didn’t speak.

“I’m a jerk. I’m seriously an asshole, Max.” I pressed my cheek to his shoulder. “I was an asshole even before the accident. A bully. Too scared to be myself, and now it’s too late. Everything’s fucked-up. I’m fucked-up.”

Because God rolled the dice and let the wrong person live.

“It should’ve been me,” I said. “I should have died instead of Ryan.”

His body went taut. Blunt fingernails dug into the back of my skull. I didn’t flinch.

“Don’t say that. Don’t you ever say that.”

“It’s true. He was better than me. Everyone’s better than me.”

Max pulled back to look into my face. The air fogged, thick with my vodka breath. “You’re a good person, Vada. You took care of me when I needed it.”

“I killed your son.”

“Not you. You didn’t do it.”

“Huh?”

He helped me stand. He wasn’t even drunk. “No more suicide talk, okay?”

“Okay.”

“That’s not you. You’re strong.”

“Okay.”

“Do I need to stay here tonight?”

“I’m fine, really. Why are you here?”

He took an envelope from his coat. “Happy birthday.”

“What is this?”

“I know you’re struggling.”

We both stared at the envelope, avoiding each other’s eyes. “Max, I can’t. I can’t take your money.”

“No strings. You don’t owe me anything. Please.”

You don’t get it, I thought. I owe you everything. I took the most precious thing from you.

“I appreciate it, but I’m okay. My mom will help me out.”

“Your mother’s struggling, too.”

“Let me worry about that.”

Max shook his head. “Stubborn girl.”

It took a while to convince him to go. Tonight I was the jumper and he was the lifeline. I smiled, lied, flirted till he felt awkward. Promised I’d text if I felt like hurting myself.

What a joke. If I felt like hurting myself.

That’s what got us all into this mess in the first place.

A bar of moonlight split my room in two. I sat at my desk and flattened my hands to stop their shaking.

“Ellis, have you ever thought about killing yourself?”

I turned on the banker’s lamp. Pulled a sketchpad from beneath a pile of art history books, a drawing pencil from the cup. Dull tip. It took a minute to find a razor blade and another to shave a point.

“Doesn’t everyone?”

“But I mean, have you fantasized about how you’d do it?”

The last time I’d drawn was three months ago. I flipped past my final sketches, studies of hands, wrists, delicate birdlike bones. Blank page. The pencil looked like someone had massacred it with a hatchet, but there was enough graphite to work with.

I switched it to my drawing hand.

At physical therapy, they said my nerve damage was healing well except near the elbow, where bone had broken through skin. When you hit your “funny bone,” what you’re really feeling is the tingle of the exposed ulnar nerve being struck. Mine felt like that permanently. They test ulnar damage by having the patient grip a piece of paper between thumb and forefinger, then they pull the paper away. An uninjured person holds on easily. Someone like me crooks their thumb into a claw, desperately trying to hold on with the surrounding muscles.

I failed the test every week. It wasn’t healing.

“You’re lucky you’re young,” the physical therapist had said. “You have time to retrain.”

“What the fuck is lucky about this?”

The medical questionnaire had asked what I’d done for a living before the injury. Did I expect this injury to negatively impact my career? Would I like assistance transitioning into a new job field?

I’d crumpled it (with my trainable hand) and flung it in the trash.

The PT had ticked a box on his clipboard that I assumed read DENIAL.

Now I propped the sketchpad in my lap, held the pencil in a loose paintbrush grip. Much of drawing comes from the shoulder, not the hand. The hand is for fine detail; bold, smooth lines come from the whole arm. Even though my ulnar was toast I could compensate with other nerves and muscles—with vastly diminished control and progressively increasing pain.

When I pressed the onyx tip to the paper my arm drooped and a thick black scar tore across the sheet.

I had as much grip strength as a toddler.

I gritted my teeth. Try again. This time I managed to draw steadily for an inch before my hand weakened and the line zigzagged.

Try again.

“If I really wanted to die,” Ellis said, “I’d build in redundancy. Opiates and alcohol in a warm bath.”

“Wow. You’re even nerdy about suicide.”

“Anything can fail. Always have a fallback.”

The page filled with a schizoid flurry of dark wires. Lines that could not connect to each other, out of sync, out of touch. An accidental self-portrait.

Desperately, I took the pencil in my left hand and tried again. Same result: childish scribbling.

Everything was still in my brain—how the human skeleton fits together, how ribbons of muscle furl and twist around bones, how light and shadow paint objects into three dimensions—but it was locked inside and I could not extract it and put it on fucking paper anymore.

“If you were actually going to kill yourself, how would you do it?” Elle said.

“I don’t know. With whatever was nearby, I guess.”

“You don’t care how?”

“I care more about the note.”

It was so like us—she was always hung up on how, when all I cared about was why.

“What would your note say?”

“Not really a note. A drawing.”

“Of what?”

I ripped the sheet from the pad (with my trainable hand) and mashed it in my fist, tighter and tighter till it felt like my skin could absorb it, make it vanish.

“Of what I love most.”

Of you.

(—Bergen, Vada. One Thousand Ways to Say Good-Bye. Charcoal drawing on paper.)

The razor glinted on the desk, clean and bright.

Calling to me.

Put something else in your hands. Now.

I took out my phone. And there was Frankie’s message.

I know. It’s a cliché: life robs girl; girl sells body. But I didn’t think of it like that. And I didn’t think of it affirmatively, as me finding worth in my flesh despite losing the part I prized most, my primary hand. I didn’t think of it as being sex-positive or even having much to do with sex at all.

I was just broke and sad and lonely, like everyone else on this planet. The Internet is life, and life is a bunch of lonely people making money off each other’s longing.

I hurled myself onto the bed and flipped open my laptop.

Okay, cam girl. Show me what you’ve got.

The front page was a grid of images: pussies, asses, tits, mouths, a catalog of every fuckable orifice and cleft in full HD. Skin everywhere, pale peach and buttery gold and creamy brown. Few faces; the occasional tat or piercing became a substitute for identity. The bodies were in the middle of teasing themselves and others with toys and fingers, spreading legs to the lens, stroking breasts and cocks. The images had captions like #cumshow at 500 tokens and #anal play close-ups. Most of the cammers were girls, waxed and tweezed and lotioned till their hairless skin shone, but a handful were boys, also polished. They were ranked by popularity.

Tiana was number one.

Clicking her thumbnail took me to a page with a live webcam and a chat box. In the cam, Tiana/Frankie, still in her white dress, sprawled across a canopy bed. Amber light drifted through muslin bed drapes and diffused into a warm mist. Tiana looked like a reposing empress, one knee raised to show the shadow between her legs. She smiled down at her laptop screen.

The chat was full of things like this:

ImUrDaddy: spread ur legs more honey

ImUrDaddy: u look so hot

jiffylubed: how are you tonight bb?

AlphaBillionaire has tipped Tiana 200 tokens.

choclit_luvr: lets see dat pussy

Tiana’s mouth quirked. “You’re impatient tonight, boys and girls.”

Her hand trailed up her shin and caught the hem of her dress, as if on accident. It rode up her thighs. She wasn’t wearing panties.

choclit_luvr: FUCK YEAH BB

jiffylubed: exquisite.

ImUrDaddy: touch urself

She teased. When a user tipped her with tokens, more skin appeared. Eventually the dress came off. She cupped her breasts, dipped a hand between her thighs. Took her time. Those hands moved over her own skin as if she were sculpting it for us, creating herself out of nothing. Her viewers grew wild. Trash-talked each other. Lunged against invisible leashes, barely civil. The more frenzied they became, the more languorous her movements.

No. She wasn’t slowing down—I was just caught up in the hysteria with all the others.

At two thousand tokens, the page informed us, Tiana would perform a blowjob. The tokens ticked up. So did my pulse. Part of me prayed she’d blow the blond boy from the party. He was my type to a T—slender, viperous, his eyes hooded and knowing. Boys like that usually knew how to fuck, took it slow, made you come first. But another part of me felt a strange resentment. As if I deserved to be in that room with her. As if I were the one she called to every time she gazed deeply into the cam. I knew that on her side she was facing a black pinhole on her laptop, a lens into nothingness. There was nothing between us. Only light dancing down wires. But somehow it still felt like she was looking at me.

Which was exactly what every other Joe Blow was undoubtedly feeling.

The token counter flashed GOAL MET.

“Thank you, gentlemen. Ladies.” I could swear she winked at the cam. She bent over, flashing bare ass and a slash of damp pink, and pulled a box from beneath her bed. “Biggest tipper gets the honors. Alpha, who will I fuck tonight?”

AlphaBillionaire: ty bb

AlphaBillionaire: big white please

Tiana removed a large peach-skinned dildo from the box.

ImUrDaddy: nooooooo suck the black one

tool1995: fuck u n***a ass bitch

[MOD]HenryVIII: tool1995 has been banned from Tiana’s chat.

ImUrDaddy: lol owned

Tiana rolled her eyes wryly, winked at the cam, then put the sex toy to her lips.

When I looked up from my laptop the room was awash in dawn light.

All night I’d clicked cam after cam, one of those porn zombies who can’t get enough, mindlessly devouring, growing hungrier the more I consumed. In the end, Tiana/Frankie was tame. There was something almost quaint about a girl sucking a dildo for hundreds of anonymous viewers. So uncomplicated, so obviously sexual. The deeper I delved into the rabbit hole, the less it was about sex. Somehow the cam girl who smeared her belly with ketchup and mayonnaise at a generous tipper’s request seemed more vulnerable than the girls who vigorously fingered themselves while their tits bounced. Fetish work was so nakedly about control. About one person’s particular pleasure.

I pay you. You obey me.

The code morganiscute unlocked a private section on Tiana’s page. Videos of her doing virtually everything sexually conceivable: fucking toys, boys, girls, household objects. Photo shoots with ultra-high-res close-ups of her nipples and clit and toes, brown and pink pixels totally decontextualized into blobs of color, like abstract art. Mundane shots of her brushing her teeth or pulling on socks. Oddly, the mundane pics far outnumbered the sexier ones.

Was that a thing? Chore porn?

Maybe it wasn’t solely about getting off. Maybe it was the illusion of intimacy, of sharing a life with this girl you jerked off to. Seeing her doing normal human things. Imagining yourself there beside her, brushing your teeth after you made her come.

I’d expected stuff like anal and bondage, every shade of kink. None of that fazed me. It was the sheer normalcy that made me uneasy. The raw, pulsing loneliness of it. I knew this world. I knew these hungry zombies with gravestone shadows beneath their eyes, emptiness aching in their palms. I was one of them.

Camwhorez.com operated on a token system. One token cost ninety-nine cents USD.

There was no info on the site about what percentage cammers took home, but even at a measly 10 percent royalty rate, Tiana would’ve earned two hundred bucks for two hours of work. My entire month’s rent in one night.

“Numbers don’t lie,” Ellis said once. “Not like fiction. Or art.”

“ ‘Art is a lie that makes us realize truth.’ ”

“Who said that, some artist?”

“Some artist. Pablo something.”

“Oh, shut up. I know who Picasso is.” She looked at me fervently, imploring me to understand. “But that’s the difference. Numbers can’t lie. They’re pure. Our faces, our names, they’re all lies. They’re fictions we invent to tell stories about ourselves.”

“But you like stories.” I twisted a lock of her hair. Long bangs, buzzed on the sides. As if she were two different people. “You like playing make-believe with me. Isn’t there truth in that, too? In the ways we pretend?”

“That’s different. That truth is full of shades.”

“So is life.”

“To us. But when you look at it under a microscope, life is just equations playing out. Geometry and physics. Numbers. Each one has one meaning. It’s so simple and clear. So beautiful. It comforts me.”

I smiled. “I love the way your mind works. It’s so simple and clear. It comforts me, too.”

“Are you calling me simple?”

“No, silly. I’m calling your mind beautiful.”

(—Bergen, Vada. A Beautiful Mind. Copic marker on paper.)

Truth in numbers. Who could argue with two hundred bucks a night?

Maybe it really was that simple.

You pay me. I obey you.

On Monday I walked into the coffee shop and stood in the doorway, soaking up the light. Ceiling crisscrossed with timber beams, exposed brick walls. Once upon a time it had been a warehouse full of men in brine-stained overalls with arms like marine rope.

Strange, to look at something and know it’s the last time you’ll see it.

I wondered what Max said the last morning he saw his son. If he regretted it now, something petty, thoughtless. An omitted I love you because of course he did and it was awkward to keep reminding the kid. No I’m proud of you or I know your life isn’t easy or I’m sorry I wasn’t a better father.

I knew exactly what I’d said to Elle before the headlights flared in the rearview like a supernova.

I’m sorry I’m sorry I love you.

Tanya gave me a cagey look when I stepped behind the register. She wasn’t scheduled today.

“Someone call off?” I said, reaching for my apron.

No answer.

Curtis poked his head out at the sound of my voice. “Vada. Come see me in my office.”

I’d shut my phone off when he wouldn’t stop calling all weekend. So this was the inevitable, then.

“No.”

“We need to talk about—”

“No,” I echoed, louder. “If you’re going to fire me, do it here. In front of everyone. Where you can’t put your hands on me, for once.”

Heads swiveled from the order line. Tanya darted a shocked glance at us. Curt reddened.

A customer walked over and strode right behind the counter.

“Excuse me,” Frankie’s blond friend said in his mellifluous voice. “There a problem here?”

Frankie sauntered up behind him, planting herself at my side.

I could have kissed them both.

Curtis eyed the guy edgily, possibly wondering if he was a jealous ex. “Sir, I’m afraid I have to ask you to—”

“The thing is,” Frankie said, propping her palms on the counter, “maybe I misheard, but I could swear the young lady just described sexual harassment by a superior.”

Her friend shook his head. “And then you were going to fire her? That’s—what’s the word—”

“Extortion,” I blurted, my heart skipping.

Frankie tsked. “And in front of all these witnesses, too.”

“Not smart,” the guy said.

“Not smart at all,” Frankie said.

Curt looked from him to her to me. “This is a big misunderstanding. I never meant—”

“How about you take some time to reflect,” the blond guy said, “and give the lady the day off?”

“Paid time off,” I added.

Frankie caught my eye and smiled.

My boss mumbled at the counter, head down. “Okay. We’ll see you tomorrow, Vada.”

Dumbass. Don’t use my real name.

The three of us strolled out into cool ocean air and cobblestone streets glazed with mist.

“Holy shit,” I crowed once the shop door closed. “What are you guys even doing here? You realize you just saved my job?”

Blondie gave me a shrewd look. “Don’t thank us. If you got fired, you could get unemployment.”

“I don’t want unemployment. I want to work.”

“Pride comes before a fall, Vada Bergen,” Frankie said slyly.

I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. They went on a few paces before turning.

“Who are you?” My fists and calves tensed. “Did someone send you?”

“Huh?” said the guy.

“Are you from the insurance company? Am I under investigation?”

They glanced at each other.

“You in some kind of trouble?” Frankie asked.

It seemed ridiculous, suddenly. Trouble. Trouble would be a price on my head, a hit. All I had was a bereaved man seeking closure over his son’s death. Closure I had good cause to prevent.

No one is after you, I thought. You’re just paranoid, Vada.

The blond guy peered up the street. “You afraid of your boss?”

“No. Never mind.”

“This is no place to chat,” Frankie said. “Join us for breakfast? We’re not criminals, I swear.”

“Just criminally good-looking,” Blondie said.

Frankie rolled her eyes.

Portland’s morning rush was in full swing. Flannel coats streamed around us, the weather-beaten faces of laborers mixing with pristine white collars. You could read their lives in their hands. The dockworkers’ were callused, rope-burned, cracked. Golem hands, tough as stone.

We headed to a pub at the end of the wharf, entered through a swing door. No patrons at this hour. Sawdust hung in still nebulas within shafts of sun. We sat on high-backed stools near the kitchen and watched a cook open a crate of fresh-caught fish.

Frankie scrolled her phone while the blond guy spread his hands in welcome.

“We haven’t officially met. I’m Dane.”

“Vada. Which you already knew, apparently.”

“We e-stalked you,” Frankie said.

“Gotta vet the candidates,” Dane said.

Frankie counted off a finger. “Mistake number one: didn’t use a disposable email address, ‘[email protected].’ ”

“That’s ‘memory, the heart’ in Spanish,” Dane said. “I looked it up. Some painting. Total nightmare fuel.”

“So uncultured,” Frankie said. “But at least he’s cute.”

He ignored her slight. “We found your real name. Then all your social media accounts. We know where you work, go to school, who your friends are. Even found your mom and sister.”

Frankie flipped another finger. “Mistake number two: didn’t use a proxy.”

“A proxy hides your tracks online,” Dane said. “Makes you anonymous. People can’t tell where you’re connecting from.”

“I know,” I said. “Shouldn’t you stalkers know my best friend is a coder?”

Frankie raised an eyebrow. “Your best friend didn’t do a great job teaching you online safety.”

She had, though. I’d grown careless on purpose. I was so sick of being lost I just wanted someone, anyone, to find me.

“Okay,” I said. “What else did you learn about me?”

Two women survive fatal car accident. Man, eighteen, who died in crash was well above legal blood alcohol limit.

Dane shrugged. “The past is the past. All we care about is who you are now.”

“Can you follow instructions?” Frankie set her phone on the bar. “Can you exercise discretion in heated situations? Can you handle new experiences which may disturb and unsettle you?”

“Am I joining a cult or a cam site?”

“The site I linked you to,” Frankie said, “is no longer my employer. They’re my competition.”

“You quit?”

“Broke out. I was their biggest star, and they paid me peanuts. I stopped doing private chats. Wasn’t worth the time. I made more in free chat off tips.”

“We thought we could do better,” Dane said. “So we became entrepreneurs. Rented a studio. Bought top-of-the-line gear. Now we’re signing the talent.”

That’s where I came in. Fresh blood, naive. They’d exploit me the same way this site had exploited them.

But I needed cash and a place to crash, fast.

Dane stroked a thumb across his lower lip. In the dimness his eyes glittered like sun skipping off ocean chop. His face fascinated me, aesthetically. Every angle was oblique, deflective. The shift of the sea was in it. Emotion crested for a second and was gone.

“Sell me on it,” I said.

“Great work environment.” Dane laced his hands behind his head. His jacket rode up, revealing chiseled abs and V lines. “Excellent views.”

I snorted.

“You make your own schedule,” Frankie said. “Work at your own pace. All necessities are provided—room, food, clothes. We take care of you. And our royalty rate is the most generous in the industry. To make this much solo, you’d have to be a celebrity.”

“What’s the catch?”

“Our clients have very particular tastes.”

“What she means,” Dane cut in, “is they’re kinky bastards.”

“And not your garden-variety kink,” Frankie said. “We’re talking extremes. Gray areas. Boundary pushing. There’s an EMT on-site at all times.”

“It’s not for everyone.” Dane scrutinized me dispassionately. “You need to be willing to face your dark side every night, and not fall into it.”

“Intrigued?” Frankie said.

I nodded, slowly.

“Good,” she said. “Very good.”

“Now,” Dane said, the hint of a curve in his lips, “sell us on you.”